Diplomatic Service and Resources

Debate between Chris Bryant and Lord Swire

Tuesday 13th March 2018 Westminster Hall

[Sir Hugo Swire (East Devon) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr Bailey, for getting round to this knight, as Sir Lancelot may have said to Guinevere. I am delighted to join in this important debate this morning. I hope that it will not be the last we shall have on the subject.

I do not seek to replicate much of what my right hon. and hon. Friends have said. I just want to pick up on one or two issues, the first of which is our physical global imprint—our estate. I hope to go from here later to a lunch to congratulate James Stourton and Luke White, who have produced a magnificent book called “British Embassies: Their Diplomatic and Architectural History”. It is an extraordinarily good book on Britain’s overseas estate. Looking through it, it is possible to have one of two reactions—to giggle in bemused embarrassment at the awful post-colonial life that our embassies represent, or feel rather proud that we possess some of the finest properties, many of which, incidentally, were gifted to us by the then Heads of State of the host countries. That is something that other countries look on with envy.

In my four and a half years at the Foreign Office, I was pleased to open some rather small embassies that had been closed, in Asunción and in El Salvador, and a consulate in Recife, and so on. It was always a source of pride to be reopening embassies, however small, rather than going around closing them. I cannot think of a single example, in retrospect, about which we can say, “Gosh, weren’t we clever to sell X embassy: we are in much better accommodation now”—Madrid being one of the great disasters. I was rather involved in the Bangkok embassy site; the rationale for the sale was that it was inappropriately located and no longer fit for purpose, although, needless to say, we had just spent some huge amount of money on accommodation on that site. I note with horror what I have picked up on my various visits—that the Chancellery building in Paris, which will be well known to my right hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex (Sir Nicholas Soames), whose bedroom no doubt overlooked it for many happy years, is possibly going to be sold. What a ridiculous message it would send to Paris, at the heart of Europe, as we exit the European Union, to sell our Chancellery building on the rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré.

My right hon. Friend the Minister does an excellent job in the Foreign Office now. I do not know whether he sits on the body I sat on—the Foreign Office board, where many of these things are discussed. It strikes me, in my experience, that these things are never brought to the attention of Ministers. Perhaps they are brought to the Foreign Secretary, but on the whole they are decided by the permanent under-secretary and others—the mandarins within the Foreign Office. There is absolutely no doubt, to my way of thinking, that these are Treasury-led decisions. It is about saving money, not about looking at our global footprint and where we want to be represented.

In future, whenever there is any discussion, there is an oversight role here for the Foreign Affairs Committee, on which many hon. Members sit, to have a view on any proposed changes to the diplomatic estate globally, and not at the eleventh hour, when the decisions have effectively already been taken. I would like to see that change, and I would welcome the Minister’s view on that.

[Chris Bryant]

rose—

[Richard Benyon]

rose—

[Sir Hugo Swire]

I will take the hon. Gentleman’s intervention first, and then that of my right hon. Friend.

[Chris Bryant]

The Foreign Affairs Committee intends to do exactly as the right hon. Gentleman suggests. If I can correct one thing, I do not think the Madrid decision was made on a Treasury basis. The old building was difficult to maintain and was listed under Spanish law and all the rest of it, but we did move to the wrong place. I opened it, as it happened—the highest embassy we have in the world, I think, because it is in the highest capital in Europe and on the 75th floor, or whatever. It is virtually inaccessible to lots of people and it was a terrible mistake for us to move there. My biggest concern—